SOLVED: Help ID a Home Depot Plant?

Hey all, found this plant at Home Depot, the tag says it's a sanseveria which seems wrong. The guy working the department was no help; he said it looked like chives but I tasted a piece of one of the stalks and it just tasted like grass.

All I can say for sure is that it is a very traumatized plant. Are the green growths newish after the plant got some regular watering?

My first thought was it was a very common tillandsia though I have never seen them attached to a big caudex before.

There is also a little bulb that is a bit similar but I doubt Home Depot would ever have it and I have not seen 3 attached to bulb like that though I have not seen that many.

Then I said must be a ponytail plant. Beaucarnea recurvata. But I have mostly seen them with an elongated neck. Home Depot sells them in droves.

I thought the main central head died and was cut off. Someone started watering it again so it shot out 3 new heads.

I have 1 that is about 10 feet tall. It has the huge central one on a very long neck with 2 side shoots on the side of the very big caudex which are only like 2 or 3 feet tall. I bought it at an antique show many, many years ago and it loves me as much as I love it. My husband could not believe I had found a plant to buy at an antique show. LOL

Your plant must have been totally neglected to have the caudex so shriveled.. This plant does not have to be watered often for it stores its water in that caudex which should be fat and happy not shriveled.

I am guessing by looking at the 3 new growths, it will probably live and rehydrate its caudex. Just do not compensate by over watering it and rotting it. But regular watering but only when the soil is completely dry should fix it though I do not have any experience reviving them.. Plants in spring are getting the internal message to grow, grow, grow so they tolerate more missteps than they do in winter when they are being told to rest.

I once had a most beautiful Dioscorea elephantipes which I bought unrooted and unpotted. I put it in a very shallow pot. The caudex was about 8 inches across. It put out its vine like growth which found its way up to my sky lights in my dining room, attaching to whatever it hit on the up. I was in deep serious love. But I was so afraid of killing it, come winter, I stopped watering it. Then 1 day I looked at it and it had totally collapsed dead in its fancy pot. It was a sudden death. I could not find another.

Someone else may have a total different take.

I hope you got that plant free.

They sell Beaucarnea aka ponytail palm. They shrivel like this when neglected.

If it's a ponytail palm it was awfully misleading of them to sell it in the low light section. But that wouldn't necessarily surprise me at a Home Depot.

Fortunately I have south facing windows, I'll give it some TLC and try to make a nice bonsai out of him.

Thank you all for your help!